


back and forth

by canadino



Series: babysitting au [2]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-31
Updated: 2015-07-31
Packaged: 2018-04-12 04:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4466207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canadino/pseuds/canadino
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The way it was, was Gin was the obnoxious boy who pulled on the pigtails of the girl he liked and Takasugi was the girl who threw sand in his eyes and spit on Gin’s gashed knees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	back and forth

To the majority of the school’s faculty and student body, Yoshida-sensei was simply Yoshida-sensei - one in the small collective of first year teachers, who taught his classes in Japanese history and literature with a quiet but authoritative voice and offered plenty of warm smiles to go around. He was not enough of a pushover to be disliked and at the very least, the most disagreeable students merely tolerated him. On a whole, he was well-liked and supported, by the girls as a remarkable and ideal man and by the boys as a man who understood the sort of things high school boys worry about and urged them to consider the larger picture. There was a portion of the student body who absolutely adored him, and Takasugi Shinsuke fancied himself as the most devoted of them all. He would run any errand and do any sort of extra credit, and although he was a decently average student, he stayed behind after school to talk to sensei, whom he had been given the extreme privilege of calling, affectionately, _Shouyo-sensei_.

“Hey, pops,” Sakata Gintoki said, almost flinging the classroom door open. “Let’s go home.”   


The only title that eluded Takasugi still for his beloved teacher was ‘father’, and that seemed to be saved only for the most undeserving of them all. In comparison, Takasugi’s own blood father was a nag and a bore. He wondered what on earth Gintoki had done in a past life to deserve something so good as this arrangement. “Oh,” Gintoki said, noticing Takasugi sitting up in the first row right in front of the lecturing podium, where Shouyo was standing. “I didn’t know you had someone from the middle school shadowing you today. I’ll let you finish talking before we go home.”

“Please don’t refer to me as your father at school,” Shouyo said, irritatingly gentle to the shaggy-haired thorn in Takasugi’s hypothetical side. Thorns deserved ill-treatment. “The other teachers will think I’m being favorable toward you.”

“You’re not my homeroom teacher, so it’s okay,” Gintoki said, using his juvenile and primitive knowledge as usual.

“And also - apologize to Shinsuke. Even as a joke, you shouldn’t tease him just because he hasn’t had his high school growth spurt yet.” Shouyo gave him a tender smile although what he said wounded him in a roundabout way. “It’s completely alright still at this point in time. There’s a bunch of boys your age who will shoot up in the next two years.”

“Forget it! Shrimps like him are destined to be tiny foot stools.” Gintoki stuck out his tongue, which struck Takasugi as a fairly elementary taunt. He didn’t bother responding in kind; when Shouyo turned back to Gintoki, Takasugi quickly shot him a fierce thumbs down under the desk. From the way Gintoki’s hair, already darting off in different directions, bristled, he was satisfied that his ire had been properly portrayed.   


“Gintoki, you don’t have to babysit Kagura today?”  


“The kindergarten has a play they’re rehearsing for today and she’s got one of the main parts, so she has to stay after school. Speaking of which; the play’s on Thursday and she’s been dropping a lot of hints that she wants me to go, so do you mind giving me a ride that evening?”  


“Of course. Shinsuke, we’ll walk you home, since you’re on the way. You two wait outside; I’ve got to get my papers in order at the faculty office, so I’ll meet you in a bit.”  


“When did sensei get a car?” Takasugi asked as they made their way to the front entrance of the school. For good measure, he kicked Gintoki on the back of his knees, but he didn’t kneel down like Katsura tended to. Katsura was also one of Shouyo’s favorites, but he didn’t rub it in everyone’s faces like Gintoki, so Takasugi let him live in peace. Although - Katsura, like Gintoki, was an orphan and was currently a ward of the state, and if Shouyo adopted him too, he’d have to make room in his day to torment him as well. “He never told me about that.”  


“Why would he have to tell someone who isn’t family about personal matters like that?” Gintoki kicked him right back, though with the differences in their heights, he caught Takasugi along the upper thigh. “Sometimes, he drives me to school too. Although I don’t usually wake up early enough.”  


“How wasteful. But I guess if you have a glut of opportunity, you don’t need to seize every chance with sensei.”  


“Are you jealous, bean sprout? Okay, I’ll bite; I’ll let you come see Kagura’s play with me and you can ride in Shouyo’s car. It can be a date.”  


Takasugi shoved Gintoki into a row of lockers. A convenient part of being shorter than average was his center of gravity was lower, so he knew where to upend others. Gintoki didn’t seem to react to flopping ungracefully into the metal doors. “Who’d want to go on a date with a waste of space like you? I have better things to do with my time.”

“I think I bit the inside of my cheek,” Gintoki said. 

“Good. I hope you bleed to death.” 

Shouyo appeared right at the best time before a full-fledged fight broke out between them on the school steps. He came just in time to see Gintoki with a fistful of Takasugi’s hair and a fist digging right into stomach. They broke apart immediately upon his arrival, and Shouyo didn’t bother reprimanding them. If he did so every time he caught them in such a situation, he’d be at them all day. Now, he only stepped in if they were yelling and not separating with the intrusion of others. “Shall we?” he asked pleasantly. 

The walk home consisted mostly of a monologue on Takasugi’s part, primarily toward Shouyo, and was interrupted only by Shouyo’s comments. Gintoki had stopped trying to interject - doing so only made Takasugi talk louder to drown him out and he already had suffered through hours of school and didn’t have the energy or desire to really exert more than he had to. Just as they stopped outside Takasugi’s house, a grand manor on another scale than Kagura’s, Takasugi turned to Gintoki. “Make sure to ice the inside of your mouth when you get home.”

“What?” Gintoki said, cocking his head and putting on his best stupid expression that he knew annoyed Takasugi the most. “Why would I do that? Am I spitting too much fire for you? You can’t keep up, huh?”

Takasugi puffed up when he was angry. “Shouyo-sensei,” he said, because responding to Gintoki would only make him say dishonorable things in front of his most respected teacher, “when you get tired of having Gintoki as your son, please feel free to adopt me.”

“My,” Shouyo said as they approached the apartment they shared. “Don’t you ever get tired of teasing Shinsuke? I know he eggs you on, but isn’t there a time when you two just want to get along for a change of pace?”

“That would be boring,” Gintoki said. “Then it would be like if I had two Katsuras.” 

“What did he mean, that you should ice the inside of your mouth? Did he hit you?” He made Gintoki open his mouth wide to show him. “You look fine.”

“I am fine,” Gintoki insisted. “I lied to make him feel bad, but I didn’t expect him to feel that bad.” 

Shouyo smiled as he unlocked the door, but it was a resigned sort of smile. “Shinsuke doesn’t dislike you, Gintoki. I’d say he’s actually quite fond of you.”

[=]

He and Shouyo-sensei went way back. Granted, that also meant that he and Gintoki (and Katsura, if he was being fair) also went way back, but that was irrelevant. When he was ten, Takasugi’s father told him to be careful of the house next to the cheap florist, because it was where all the foster kids were sent. The explanation was vague, as Takasugi’s father tended to be vague when he didn’t really want to have his loose-lipped son repeat his words all throughout the neighborhood, but apparently someone who actually liked vagabond children took in as many foster children as he could at one time. Takasugi didn’t really know what a foster child was, but he was brave and he was going to find out. 

The foster home, as Takasugi’s father put it, had an extremely loud backyard. Though small and sheltered from the main road by a dense wall of shrubbery, Takasugi heard loud, shrill voices running around on the other side. It sounded like a playground. There was a small hole underneath the bushes that he forced himself through to take a closer peek. When he surfaced again on the other side, he found himself right next to a boy’s hip. 

The boy looked at him from his seat on the ground. “What are you doing?”

Takasugi had no idea what to say so he didn’t say a word. “If you lost something over the wall, you could have just told Yoshida-san. He would have gotten it for you.” He seemed really suspicious with half of his body through the shrubs, so he pulled himself through the entire way. His mother would scold him for getting dirt all over his clothes, but he’d worry about that later. 

“Hey, Zura!” one of the boys who had been running around with the other children called. Now that Takasugi had a better vantage point, he saw that it was just as small a backyard as he had figured. There were some stray balls and sticks lying around, but other than those, it was a sparsely decorated yard. There were about ten other children darting around. “Are you done having your sulk yet? Are you coming back to play?”  


“It’s not Zura, it’s Katsura,” the boy next to Takasugi insisted. “And I’m not having a sulk. You just keep pulling my hair when I get too close to the can, and I’m telling you, I don’t want to be bald before I turn eleven.”  


“I’m not pulling that hard.” The boy separated himself from the pack and walked over to the corner. He had dirt on his face and leaves sticking out of the mess of his hair, curling and wild. Katsura, the boy next to him, had longer hair than Takasugi had seen on any of his classmates. It was well-kept and extended a little past his shoulders; Takasugi might have thought him a girl, but the boy’s face was losing its baby fat and he had his legs crossed in such a careless way. “Who’s that?”  


“I don’t know. He just climbed through the bushes.”  


“Did Shouyo take in another kid?” The curly haired boy knelt down. “I know it can be scary,” he said, “but this place isn’t so bad. You’ll get used to it in no time.”  


It occurred to him that the boys thought he was a foster child, whatever that meant. “I’m not like you,” Takasugi found himself protesting. “I’m not a foster kid!”

Katsura and the boy looked at each other. “Look,” the boy said, scratching his head. “I mean, there’s nothing wrong with being a foster kid. Okay, so your parents maybe didn’t want you anymore. They’ve got circumstances. Shouyo said so. Maybe they can’t afford to keep you or other adult things. You can’t keep holding onto hope that they’ll come back for you.”

“I’m telling you I’m not a foster kid.” Takasugi still wasn’t very sure what it was himself. “I live in a real house around here. I just came here so I could see what you guys were doing.”  


“Oh.” The boy and Katsura looked at each other again. “Are you sure you should be here? Won’t your parents be looking for you? I thought little kids were supposed to hold on to their mommy’s hand when they went outside.”  


Takasugi stood up with the injustice of it all. “I am ten years old,” he told the rude boy. “So I’m not a little kid. My dad lets me ride my bike outside alone.” 

“You’re ten years old?” The boy stood up and Takasugi found himself looking up, as the boy was half a head taller than he was. Katsura stood as well, and although he was not as tall as the boy, the top of his head still reached a point above Takasugi. “Wow. Do they feed you at home?”  


“At least I have one!”   


“You’re really pissing me off saying those kinds of things!”  


“Gintoki,” Katsura said, his voice and demeanor clearly designating him as the peacekeeper of the yard. He reached out but Gintoki tossed his hand aside. “Don’t get into a fight. Especially with a neighborhood kid. You know what Yoshida said; you’ll get him in trouble.”  


“I’ll take responsibility. But let me beat up this toddler first.”   


Takasugi first met Shouyo when he came outside after hearing shrieks and found the kids in a circle with Gintoki and Takasugi brawling in the middle. After Shouyo had dissolved the circle, allowing Katsura to lead the younger children inside with the promise of snacks, he scolded Gintoki and inquired about Takasugi. Despite the boys clearly glaring daggers at each other, he invited them both inside for fruit snacks while he called Takasugi’s house. Takasugi’s mother showed up fifteen minutes later, apologizing profusely for her son. 

“Don’t come back,” Gintoki said. “If you know what’s good for you.”   


“If you think you’re scaring me away, it’s not working,” Takasugi said. His mother pulled him away before he could say anything else. His father gave him a great tongue lashing when he came home from the office, and Takasugi avoided the foster home for a few days after, but soon Shouyo answered the door to find Takasugi asking for a rematch.   


“I’m afraid I can’t condone violence” Shouyo said. “And anyway, the children are in lessons right now, so they’re not allowed to come play.”   


It was summer, so Takasugi could not wrap his mind around it, but after Shouyo let him inside after seeing his perplexed face, he found the foster children sitting around a table doing their summer homework. It seemed that though their personal lives had been disrupted, Shouyo was not letting their academic lives suffer as well. Though the older children were allowed to do their work on their own, Shouyo was reviewing material for the younger ones. 

“Oh,” Takasugi said, suddenly feeling intrusive. He thought about his summer homework, sitting untouched on his desk in his bedroom.   


“Hey!” Gintoki yelled. “I thought I told you to stay away.”  


With Shouyo’s permission, Takasugi snuck over to the foster home with his summer homework and was allowed to sit with the others while working. Most afternoons were spent sparring with Gintoki under the table, attacking and protecting his own shins from a devastating blow. After a while, Katsura was mindful to sit a certain distance away from them to avoid being caught in the crossfire. Takasugi’s mother caught him sneaking out one afternoon, but after he showed her his mostly completed summer homework, she decided on the best of both evils and agreed to keep it a secret from her husband. At the end of the summer, Takasugi looked up and around and found his summer homework finished and a considerable lack of faces around the table. In fact, it was really only him, Gintoki, Katsura, and a four year old that Shouyo was working with. 

“Where did all the kids go?” Takasugi asked when they took a juice box break.   


“They’re fed up with breathing the same air as you,” Gintoki said. “They said they’d rather roam the streets than look at your face.”   


“I suppose I haven’t told you yet,” Shouyo said as Takasugi shot a hand into Gintoki’s ribs. “I told the children this, but I’m temporarily retiring as a foster parent. I’ve decided to go back to school to become a teacher, since I’ll be able to reach more children that way. I won’t have as much time to look after as many kids even if I take evening classes.”   


That would explain why the area around Shouyo’s house had been quieter as of late. His father no longer referred to it as the foster home, in lieu of more interesting topics of conversation. “Don’t worry about Gintoki and Kotarou. I’ll find them splendid foster homes and I’ll make sure they visit often so you can see your friends still.” 

“He’s not my friend,” Takasugi muttered.   


“Goodie-two-shoes Zura won’t have any trouble finding people who’ll take care of him,” Gintoki declared. “But I’m a troublemaker. I’m trouble! That’s why you should just make it easier and adopt me, Shouyo. Really! I’m a little demon and no one can handle me.”  


“Don’t nag Yoshida-san,” Katsura frowned. “You’ve been saying that for weeks. You’ll only be a handful. He’s going back to school, you know. That means a lot of homework so he won’t have time for you.”   


“What if I did adopt Gintoki?” Shouyo asked. “Would you like to be my son too, Kotarou?”  


Katsura looked down, but Takasugi saw the flush of pride on his face. “Obviously. But it’s okay if it’s too much trouble, too.” 

“I don’t want Zura as my brother. Come on! I’ll go down and get the paperwork with you. They hate me, over in the office. They’ve moved me so many times and it’s boring getting to know new parents. I wanna stay with you!”   


“We’ll see,” Shouyo said, smiling fondly as he ever did. After school started again, Shouyo’s house had a realtor’s sign out front and Takasugi’s father informed them over dinner that the foster home had officially broken up. There would be no more abandoned children wandering the neighborhood. Also, he was pleased to hear from Takasugi’s teacher that his summer homework was very good. A few years later, when Takasugi was receiving applications for high school, Shouyo came back, though now as Shouyo-sensei with his adopted son Gintoki in tow. He was to be teaching at a local public high school, one below Takasugi’s range. Katsura had returned earlier as well, although he lived on the other side of the neighborhood and only nodded at Takasugi whenever they crossed paths, which was rarely. He too would be attending the public high school with Gintoki.   


Takasugi engaged in a passionate argument with his father one night after his academic councilor called to inform the household that Takasugi had rejected all the offers to the prestigious high schools in the area in favor of attending public high school, though even the threat of disownment did not stop Takasugi from following Shouyo. The heavens rewarded him for his loyalty by placing him in Shouyo’s homeroom. Hell punished him by not disposing of Gintoki once and for all. 

[=]

Nowadays, they wandered in completely different social circles. Katsura spent his time with a group that he unofficially seemed to lead, although they did mostly aimless activities around school. Gintoki switched groups periodically, never really staying in any one group though he was friendly with them all. After Gintoki exposed his pedigree and disdain for the average commoner, Takasugi found himself mostly spending time with Shouyo, and if not, with the small ragtag collective consisting of a boy band wannabe, a tomboy who enjoyed the shooter games at the local arcade, and a boy who they unanimously distanced themselves from frequently due to his lecherous behavior and penchant for flipping skirts. All for the best - Takasugi didn’t want to spend too much time around anyone who still reminded him that he’d had lazy eye when he was much younger and called him a one-eyed mouse. Takasugi had taken measures to make sure those photos of him never left the house and would never be seen by anyone. “Shinsuke,” Shouyo said as Takasugi accompanied him to make a large number of copies. “I’d like to ask you for a favor.”

“Anything, sensei.”  


“You know the girl Gintoki babysits? As you’ve heard, she’s in a play two days from now at her kindergarten and I promised her I’d be able to go, since he’s brought her to meet me a few times. But there’s a staff meeting that was announced this morning on Thursday evening and I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it. Would you mind going as my proxy?”  


“Anything but that, sensei.”  


“Oh, come now, Shinsuke, it won’t be that bad. Kindergarten plays are usually precious.”  


“I have nothing against kindergarten plays. But the girl’ll understand that you’re busy, since you’re an adult. I don’t want to spend my evening being harassed by Gin.”  


“I’ll tell him to be on his best behavior. Please? I told her she’d have two people cheering for her, and her father works late hours so he won’t be able to make it. She’ll be so disappointed and I don’t want her to feel sad.” Shouyo was a sly adult because he was not beyond guilting teenagers.   


“Fair,” Takasugi said, momentarily weakened. “But Gintoki’s got a ton of friends. If he wants someone to go with, he could ask anyone - like Katsura.”  


“That’s true, but when I asked who I should ask in my stead, he said I should ask you. And thank you for the lovely flowers on my birthday, they were wonderful.”  


“What I said,” Gintoki said when Takasugi confronted him in between classes, “was that if anyone would be sitting at home doing nothing on a Thursday night, it would be you. I was just thinking of the person who would be inconvenienced the least, and thought that since you’re a boring kid, you’d be most likely to have the time.”  


“I have lots to do,” Takasugi told him, although he was right in that he would probably be sitting at home watching television on Thursday. “You know I’d be the first to do a favor for Shouyo-sensei, but I can’t stand being around you.”   


“Sure, sure,” Gintoki said, waving his hand and walking past him to get to class. “I’ll pick you up at six-thirty on Thursday.”  


“I don’t need you to pick me up. And I never said I’d go, in the first place.” But Gintoki was ignoring him and there was no point shouting down the hallway. Shouyo thanked him later with a carton of strawberry milk, which he couldn’t tell was a backhanded insult or an affectionate gesture. By the end of the day, Takasugi was in a foul mood and skulked home by himself. He hadn’t gone halfway when a boy blocked his path. He recognized the black uniform from the boarding school up the hill that was considered a pipeline from academia to the government and included a university attached to the name. The boy had a cigarette in his mouth and had a younger boy hanging off his arm with the same boarding school uniform, although with the way he was hanging, it looked more like he was working quietly to dislocate the older boy’s shoulder.   


“Hey,” the older boy said. He looked like he might be Takasugi’s age. “I heard about you. The runt who stole Kondo’s flowers.”   


For a moment, Takasugi had no idea - then: a week ago, he had remembered it was Shouyo’s birthday but he had forgotten to buy his beloved teacher a gift, and although Shouyo often said material goods were not always as precious as the intangible, by god he was going to get Shouyo a gift. He had run out of his allowance a few days before competing at a crane game with Gintoki (he won) and his father would most likely not give him his next allowance in advance in the interest of teaching him responsible spending. He was pondering what to do when he noticed a man stumbling around looking foolish and clutching a beautiful bouquet of flowers. Takasugi had demanded them rather aggressively, expecting to spend some time bending this man’s arm back to get the flowers, but the man had caved after a few loud threats. Takasugi remembered walking away with the flowers thinking if those were the type of adults in Japan, he needed to do something revolutionary to fix it. “If you remember, that man was my upperclassman in the kendo club. He’s graduated now to university, but he’s still my upperclassman. He finally got the girl of his dreams to agree to a date with him but you ruined it by taking his gift and she felt shafted since he showed up empty-handed. Fine. He deserves that because he doesn’t know when to quit. But more importantly, you’ll pay for humiliating him. Sougo, please let go, you’re going to rip my arm off.”

“Hijitaka,” the boy said. The boy was probably old enough to graduate from elementary school soon, at least within the next two years. “You’re supposed to be looking after me. Sis said so. All I have to do is say that you’re neglecting me and you can kiss your afternoon teas with her goodbye.”   


“Are you trying to threaten me? I have some business to take care of. Just stay over there.”   


“Are you going to get in a fight? Great. I want to fight too. If I accidentally punch you in the face, it’s because I mistook you for him, okay?”  


“Why would you go into a fight with that mentality? You’re not fighting.”  


“Get out of my way,” Takasugi said. Normally, a few fisticuffs before arriving home was no big deal. But he had unpleasant things to look forward to later in the week and he had to mentally prepare himself by infusing himself with negative energy and expelling pure hatred at Gintoki on Thursday. “I’m in no mood to deal with you today.”  


“Maybe you should have thought about that before you stole from Kondo.” Hijitaka shook the boy, Sougo, from his arm and started cracking his knuckles. This was a typical shakedown. The flowers were already taken, placed in a vase and sitting prettily on Shouyo’s desk, and the date was already done; Takasugi saw no purpose to prattling on about the fact. Perhaps the boy would see reason as well - though the way he was advancing on Takasugi, it appeared he did not.   


“Shinsuke!” Kijima rocketed at him from nowhere, tackling him in a hug from behind. “I thought it was you! Are you walking home? I’ll come with you! I’ve always wanted to see your house!” As he turned, he saw Kawakami and Takechi trail from behind. “Oh? Who’s this?”  


It was fortunate he attracted people to him, Takasugi though, for better or for worse. “Oh, him? Just a stranger who wants to give me a beatdown because he’s got a friend who just did me a favor, that’s all.”

“A favor?” Hijitaka asked, spitting out the cigarette. Sougo darted over from the sidelines to rub it out with his shoe before returning to his spot. He was a smart one, Takasugi figured; the fight was none of his business so he wasn’t going to get his hands dirty. “Say that again, pipsqueak?”  


Kijima puffed up her chest in indignation for him. “How dare you say that to Shinsuke? Do you even know who he is?”

“Don’t bother,” Takasugi said lightly. “He’s not worth a single punch from us.”   


For the record, Hijitaka threw the first punch, but he was also the first one to hit the ground. Four against one wasn’t fair, but it wasn’t fair for him to ambush a single boy in the middle of the day anyway. Sougo kicked him in the side as he lay there, pummeled mostly by Kijima and Takasugi as Kawakami fiddled with his music player and Takechi stood in the back, offering hits only when approached. “Forgive him,” Sougo said. “He’s got no class.” 

“Just get him out of my sight,” Takasugi said. The fight burned off some steam but left him in a worse mood. He had to shake off the others before he said something nasty to them - not that he minded if they soured to him, because they would come back eventually, but because he didn’t want to deal with the mess between them storming off and them coming back. Sougo stared at him, like wanted to say something, but thought better of it and settled for dragging Hijitaka off. “You three,” he said, addressing the others. “I’m not feeling really well, so please just go home today.”  


“Are you okay, Shinsuke? Did you get hit?”  


“I’m fine. Just go.” He stalked off again and heard Kijima begin to say something to have Kawakami stop her. They didn’t follow him, and after he turned a few corners, it was complete silence around him. He turned just about when he was about to round onto his street, feeling a pair of eyes on his back, but he didn’t see anyone and shrugged it off.   


[=]

Gintoki was standing on the street outside his house at six-twenty-five on Thursday, right under a street lamp. He was fiddling around with his phone, but Takasugi saw him look up at the window he thought was his room - it was the bathroom - a few times anxiously. They were set to meet at six-thirty, and Takasugi was not going to purposefully begin the ordeal before he necessarily had to. Settling for staring at Gintoki on the street staring up at his assumed bedroom window felt strange, though. Takasugi ignored it. His father finished in the bathroom and left it, turning the light off, and Gintoki started fidgeting, now looking at the house and down at his phone in almost double time. 

“Got your neck sore yet?” Takasugi asked at six-thirty-four.   


“Why would my neck be sore?” Gintoki was a master at playing things off but Takasugi saw him stretch his neck when he thought the other boy wasn’t looking. “Anyway, I didn’t know you worked so hard to get those flowers for sensei.”  


Takasugi looked at him. “So it was you following me that day.”

“Eh? What are you talking about? Why would I have followed you?”  


“You followed me and you weren’t going to jump in if that guy really did try and beat me up, were you.”  


Gintoki made a face. “I wasn’t going to do that. But those three jumped in before I did anything and I wasn’t going to show up like a boring fourth man.” Takasugi was vaguely aware that Gintoki had casually wandered over to the side of the sidewalk next to the street next to him. “And anyway, you had it all under control, didn’t you?”

“So you admit you were following me. Creep.”  


“Not so much a creep like you! Patting someone down for sensei. Ooh, I get it. Pops is your first love, isn’t he? That’s sweet.” He threw an arm around Takasugi’s shoulders, holding tight in spite of the thrashing against his side. “When you and sensei have your secret meetings, what do you guys talk about? Do you talk about crushes and first loves?”  


“Why would I talk about something stupid like that in front of sensei? What about you? Have you talked about who you like in front of him?”  


“Yeah. I tell pops who I like and stuff.” He was leading the way to Kagura’s kindergarten, because Takasugi had a vague idea of what she even looked like never mind where she went to school, but Takasugi felt like he was leading and dragging Gintoki behind with him like a large, heavy scarf. “I didn’t tell him to invite you, by the way. He told me he couldn’t make it but he wanted someone to go in his place and asked who I wanted and I said I couldn’t care less unless it was that girl Sarutobi in Class 4 who keeps asking me to eat lunch with her. He said he’d ask whoever he wanted and then you came up to me.”  


“I get it,” Takasugi said, shaking Gintoki off. The boy stopped walking altogether, bringing them to a standstill since he had no idea where they were heading. “You don’t want to spend time with me either. It’s fine. Let’s just get this over with.”  


“I like you,” Gintoki said. Takasugi knew his thought process - do it while it was dark, so his face was covered and he could look as pathetic as he sounded, his chin tucked close to his neck although his eyes were peering at Takasugi from behind the curls in front of his forehead.   


“So what? I knew that already.” Gintoki had his hand around his wrist, although it was loose and breakable; Gintoki of all people knew force did not work on Takasugi. “I’d have to be completely dense not to notice.”  


Gintoki’s laugh was almost breathless. “Yeah, I guess you’re not Sakamoto.” Takasugi pulled his arm away and felt Gintoki’s fingers against his skin. He stopped pulling. “Hey,” he said. “I’m serious about you.” 

“We’re going to miss your kid’s play if we don’t hurry up.”   


“Okay.” He let go of Takasugi, but before Takasugi could push him along, he opened his mouth and said, “Can I kiss you?”  


If he was ever conscious of Gintoki’s height, it was now, because Gintoki was walking right up to him and the top of Takasugi’s head only reached the tip of Gintoki’s nose. He knew Gintoki well enough that while he had no qualms sneering at you and getting in your face, he wasn’t going to suddenly spring a kiss on him unsolicited. “Don’t make fun of me,” Takasugi said.

“I’m not. You can say no.”   


“You’re being weird. You’re trying to trick me by being nice to me, aren’t you?”  


Gintoki’s face was blank for a long, long moment until a cheek-splitting grin made him flash his teeth. “You should have seen your face! You were panicking, weren’t you? Oh, what am I going to do, I don’t want to kiss my first love’s son! You’re probably the type of boy who can’t even look someone in the eye if you’ve jerked it to them, huh?”

“You can, if you want,” Takasugi said.  


Gintoki grabbed his face so suddenly he flinched and tensed up - but Gintoki laughed against his mouth, hot and absentmindedly, and kissed him on the corner of the mouth so it made him flush up to the tips of his ears. “We’re going to be late,” he murmured.

They snuck to their seats in the back of the auditorium during the first half of the first part, and Kagura was shrilly reciting her lines from her spot. If she noticed Gintoki, she didn’t show it and stayed perfectly in character. Gintoki looked at the stage with such a smug smile it pricked against Takasugi’s skin. He leaned over and whispered, “Just so you know, sensei isn’t my first love.”

Gintoki turned to him. “Is it me?”

Takasugi leered at him. “If that’s what you want to believe, then sure.” 

**Author's Note:**

> I CAN'T GET OVER BABYSITTING AUVERSE. I'll do better next time. Thank you for reading and please leave a comment if you liked it.


End file.
